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Mobile Apps development outsourcing busines

Anything related to sourcing or importing products.

Solid Snake

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I have a contact overseas that's looking to take on mobile app projects in the USA. This guy has a running manufacturing company established and has a team of developers as well.

He says that he has close ties with a company in NYC that outsourced their development and saved 40K on a project. So he is looking at either SaaS or mobile apps to go after, and is offering me a shot to find him leads.

My question:

Is this market saturated? Is there a fastlane idea I can pursue in here assuming his team is high quality?

I know it's something I have to test and figure out, but would appreciate any insight on how I can leverage this idea or even this contact into something viable.
 
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Spikeroo

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No market is saturated as long as you're doing something better than the competition. Look at an app that you find very convenient, and read their reviews. Find out what it is that they are doing wrong, and what the people want. The gold your looking for lies in the reviews. If you can't come up with an idea, you can always network for someone else, maybe on fiverr or something and be the middle man
 

srodrigo

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Everything is saturated. Yet, still people make money every day.
 

Solid Snake

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Everything is saturated. Yet, still people make money every day.
You’re right. It’s a dumb question, and truth is I’m action faking by asking if it’s a good idea when I should be making cold calls.
 
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Jon L

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I run a development company, and there's a ton of competition out there. Googling 'software development company' will bring up thousands of competitors.

However, I rarely come across a single competitor in my line of work. When I do, its pretty easy to sell the client on my services, unless they're looking for bargain basement prices, in which case, I don't want them as a client anyway. My developers are in Pakistan, so I'm able to price myself competitively.

How do I sell myself? I sell by asking questions, and engaging in a conversation. The questions I ask are designed to do a few things:

1) tell me about their business and their project
2) challenge my prospect to think through their project in a way they haven't considered yet
3) subtly show them the value I bring to the table with the way I ask questions
4) make me stand out because I'm friendly, knowledgeable, and easy to work with.

Things I'll do during the conversation:
1) I'll tell them if they have a viable project or not. Some people come to me with unrealistic ideas about what software can do. (No, you can't build AirBNB for $5000. No, you can't build a custom accounting system for $500.)

Some projects will have realistic budgets for part of the project, but be completely unrealistic in other parts. "I want an ordering system that's web based and behaves exactly like a desktop app for $30k" That sounds doable, but actually is incredibly challenging, and expensive. People look at what Google does in their online tools and think that we can duplicate their level of ease of use on the web. They don't realize that Google has spent millions upon millions of dollars refining their software so that it performs that way. You can't do that in a $30k budget. Its possible if you add a zero to the budget, because we don't have to worry about scaling like Google does, but for $30k, nope.

2) Sell them on their project. I'll walk them through their business case, show them the numbers, and then show them how much they will save/make by doing the project. This solidifies the project in their mind, and shows them that I truly understand where they're coming from.

3) etc (I'm running out of time answering this...might add more later)

What I'm saying is that there's a fair amount involved in selling custom software. If you look at the above and think, 'yeah, I got this,' then go for it. If this stuff sounds baffling, its going to be hard to close a sale. Much of it depends on your experience in business, and whether or not you can talk to business owners/execs convincingly. If you're just looking for leads and your friend overseas will be the one doing the final close, that might work out.
 

Solid Snake

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Jan 23, 2019
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I run a development company, and there's a ton of competition out there. Googling 'software development company' will bring up thousands of competitors.

However, I rarely come across a single competitor in my line of work. When I do, its pretty easy to sell the client on my services, unless they're looking for bargain basement prices, in which case, I don't want them as a client anyway. My developers are in Pakistan, so I'm able to price myself competitively.

How do I sell myself? I sell by asking questions, and engaging in a conversation. The questions I ask are designed to do a few things:

1) tell me about their business and their project
2) challenge my prospect to think through their project in a way they haven't considered yet
3) subtly show them the value I bring to the table with the way I ask questions
4) make me stand out because I'm friendly, knowledgeable, and easy to work with.

Things I'll do during the conversation:
1) I'll tell them if they have a viable project or not. Some people come to me with unrealistic ideas about what software can do. (No, you can't build AirBNB for $5000. No, you can't build a custom accounting system for $500.)

Some projects will have realistic budgets for part of the project, but be completely unrealistic in other parts. "I want an ordering system that's web based and behaves exactly like a desktop app for $30k" That sounds doable, but actually is incredibly challenging, and expensive. People look at what Google does in their online tools and think that we can duplicate their level of ease of use on the web. They don't realize that Google has spent millions upon millions of dollars refining their software so that it performs that way. You can't do that in a $30k budget. Its possible if you add a zero to the budget, because we don't have to worry about scaling like Google does, but for $30k, nope.

2) Sell them on their project. I'll walk them through their business case, show them the numbers, and then show them how much they will save/make by doing the project. This solidifies the project in their mind, and shows them that I truly understand where they're coming from.

3) etc (I'm running out of time answering this...might add more later)

What I'm saying is that there's a fair amount involved in selling custom software. If you look at the above and think, 'yeah, I got this,' then go for it. If this stuff sounds baffling, its going to be hard to close a sale. Much of it depends on your experience in business, and whether or not you can talk to business owners/execs convincingly. If you're just looking for leads and your friend overseas will be the one doing the final close, that might work out.

Great insights, much appreciated.

im going to start engaging with the markets with all this in mind.
 

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